Tony Becca
THE FOURTH and final Test match gets underway at the Antigua Recreation Ground in St. John's today, and with the series already decided in South Africa's favour, the interest is not on who will win but on how many fans will turn out to watch the match.
There is a fear that there will not be more than a handful of fans on any day throughout the match - so much so that Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer, Sports Minister John Maginley and Tourism Minister Harold Lovell have been on radio and television encouraging the cricket fans of Antigua to turn out in their numbers and support the team.
The fact that the West Indies, 2-0 down, cannot win or even draw the series, is not, however, the only reason for the fear - and neither is it like Queen's Park Oval and Kensington Oval.
POOR TURNOUT
The turn out was poor during the second and third Test matches and, listening to the people, it was blamed, in Port of Spain, on a surprising lack of interest in the game, and in Bridgetown on the impasse involving the West Indies Board, the players through the West Indies Players Association, Digicel and Cable & Wireless.
Listening to the many discussions around St. John's over the past three days and watching a call-in sports programme on television on Tuesday night, the reason for the fear that Antiguans may boycott the match has nothing to do with any of those things.
The real reason is that the people of Antigua are unhappy with the West Indies selectors.
According to the people, the West Indies selectors do not have a clue as to what they are doing, they are against the players from the smaller islands, there is not an Antiguan or a player from the Leeward Islands in the team and those are the reasons why the West Indies are losing.
According to Tuesday night's panel - which included former Antigua, Leeward Islands and West Indies pace bowler Winston Benjamin, if the selectors knew what they were doing, they would not have played Reon King, they would not have selected either Fidel Edwards or Tino Best - not only because there is nothing special about them but also because they have only recently recovered from injuries and have not played enough cricket since. They also would not have selected Courtney Browne (they call him Courtney Clown), they would not have selected Ryan Hinds (they call him Ryan Blinds), and for this last Test match, they would not have selected Christopher Gayle.
According to the people of Antigua, among those who should have been selected are Nikita Miller - the left-arm spinner who took the most wickets in the Carib Beer Series, pace bowlers Dwight Washington - who has been in the 12 for the first three matches but is yet to play, and Carl Simon, batsmen Sylvester Joseph and Devon Smith.
WONDERFUL POINTS
It has been really interesting listening to the people of Antigua, and particularly so to those on Tuesday night's sports programme, and it was really interesting because after starting out as if they were about to sing the praises of Leeward Islands players in general and Antiguan players in particular the members of the panel ended up making some wonderful points and asking some good questions re the selection of West Indies teams.
As good as they were, however, Benjamin and company missed out on two questions. One is why the selectors continue to select an attack of only three specialist bowlers? And two is why, even with Gayle's success as a slow bowler, they have refused to select a spin bowler?
